Other books that might interest you

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  Renascence and Other Poems

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

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  The following is a recording of the first volume of poetry published by Edna St. Vincent Millay. When the author had graduated from high school, she couldn't afford to go to college. In the summer of 1912, Vincent's sister, Norma, found work as a waitress at a hotel near where they lived. One night, Norma insisted that Vincent attend a masquerade ball, given at the hotel, if only to get Vincent out of the house and to meet people. Vincent finally gave in, and while there, sang songs and recited "Renascence," the first poem in this collection. This immediately won over the support of one "Miss Dow," who would help Vincent raise enough money to attend Vassar College. From there, she would meet others and become fully entrenched in, and later a major influence on, the literary community. (According to Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford.) (Summary by Linda Leu)

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  Bach & Sons (NHB Modern Plays)

  Nina Raine

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  Johann Sebastian Bach, irascible and turbulent, writes music of sensuous delight and deep religious fervour. He's touchy, he's fabulously rude, he has impossibly high standards (he stabs a bassoonist for playing badly), and he's constantly in trouble with his patrons.
  Music is the family business – but the burden of their father's genius weighs heavily on his sons. Wilhelm is brilliant but self-destructive. Tense, industrious Carl is more successful than his father, but knows he is less talented. As the years pass, their rivalry provokes furious arguments about love, God and above all music. What is it for – to give pleasure, like a cup of coffee in the sun, or to reveal the divine order that gives life its meaning?
  Beautiful, profound and funny, Nina Raine's play Bach & Sons is a gripping family drama and an anthem to the art that draws us together and sings of our common humanity. It premiered at the Bridge Theatre, London, in June 2021, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with Simon Russell Beale playing J. S. Bach.

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  Grimoire

  Cherene Sherrard

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  Named after a magical textbook, Cherene Sherrard’s Grimoire is a poetry collection centered on the recovery and preservation of ancestral knowledge and on the exploration of black motherhood. Incorporating experiences of food preparation, childrearing, and childbearing, the book begins with a section of poems that re-imagine recipes from one of the earliest cookbooks by an African-American woman: Mrs. Malinda Russell’s A Domestic Cookbook. Mrs. Russell’s voice as a nineteenth century chef is joined in conversation with a contemporary amateur cook in poetic recipes that take the form of soft and formal sonnets, introspective and historical lyric, and found poems. In the second section, the poet explores black maternal death and the harrowing circumstances surrounding birth for women of color in the United States. Even while confronting the dangers and tragedies of contemporary black life, Sherrard creates hopeful projections of the future. She imagines an afterlife in which souls of black mothers who have died in childbirth get to travel into space with the reluctant help of the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and she positions a doula as a figure of salvation who intervenes and advocates for black mothers, challenging the dehumanizing practices of early obstetrics, genetics, and pseudo-science. Throughout Grimoire, Sherrard explores the precarity of black mothering over the last two centuries and the creative and ingenuous modes of human survival.

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  The Poetry of Angels

  William Blake, W. B. Yeats,...

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  Angels are undeniably associated with religion and more usually Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Often they are seen as supernatural beings, benevolent celestial intermediaries interposed between God, Heaven and humanity. 
   
  They are protectors, our heavenly guides, and the servants of God. They are also His Messengers. The faithful seek their blessing, their help. A visitation is a miraculous event, filled with reverence, awe and shared with the wider community as a sign that faith has reward. 
   
  Other religions also make note of angelic contributions including Sikhism and Zoroastrianism. There is also the unnerving distinction that there are ‘fallen Angels’ that seep dark, malevolent forces into the world. They tempt, they betray, they lead us where it is not safe to go. 
   
  But faith once more resolves the dilemma; good will overcome evil. And whether a believer or not, there is a comfort that the angels of our hearts are the ones of love, of care and compassion. 
   
  Obviously there are complications, a fact that our classic poets through the centuries, including Alexander Pope, Edmund Spenser, Radclyffe Hall and Hafiz, use as they write verse to explain, to reveal and to help us understand exactly why Angels are so prevalent amongst our thoughts.

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  The New Negro - An Interpretation

  Alain Locke

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  This anthology edited by the American writer, philosopher, and patron of the arts Alain Locke brings together some of the most influential pieces of African American works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Featuring the voices of Zora Neale Thurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes, Locke included commentary on the emergence of the New Negro Movement, also known as the Harlem Renaissance. The New Negro is considered to be the definitive text on the movement.

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  My Baby First Birthday

  Jenny Zhang

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  Radiant and tender, My Baby First Birthday is a collection that examines innocence, asking us who gets to be loved and who has to deplete themselves just to survive. It's about existence and nonexistence, about being born—without consent. Jenny Zhang writes about accepting pain, about the way we fetishize womanhood and motherhood, and reduce women to their violations, traumas, and body parts. She questions the way we feminize and racialize nurturing, and live in service of other people's dreams. Her poems explore the obscenity of patriarchy, whiteness, and capitalism, the violence of rescue and heroism.The magic trick in this book is that despite all these themes, the book never feels like some jeremiad. Zhang uses friendship as a lyric. She seeks tenderness, radiant beauty, and having love for your mistakes. Through all this, she writes about being alone—really alone, like why-was-I-ever-born alone—and trying, despite everything, to reach out and touch something—skin to skin, animal to animal.

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